My father’s vigil was held in his apartment and, like my mother, he rested on the dining table for want of room. More people came to pay their respects than could be accommodated and the visitors spilled out into the hallway and, after a while, down the stairwell into the courtyard. Elisa, on her mother’s orders, left the door to their apartment open and pulled her mother’s chairs out into the hallway one by one to line up by our front door. People milled back and forth, the children left to sleep in Bina and Elisa’s room, while the adults filed through to touch the coffin. The coffin was closed and without the proof of my own eyes, it was hard to believe he really lay in it. When the chanting began, the sound echoed through the passages, drawing out the building’s remaining inhabitants. I felt penetrated by it, unable to escape it.
My sister and brother came, of course, though I hadn’t called them; I wouldn’t have known how to reach them, not having foreseen a time when I’d need to keep such information. Instead, Aunt Bina called Luisa from the telephone in the general store downstairs and asked her to track down Miguel. Perhaps it was Bina that Luisa had expected to see first, for when Lorna opened the door to her my sister greeted her angrily.
Luisa came with two children again, another two I hadn’t met before: her third and fourth. The two who’d come to our mother’s vigil had been left at home. She looked sourly at me as I struggled to name them. I repeated the names after her aloud, as if committing them to memory, my manner exaggerated slightly for her benefit, but minutes later I’d forgotten again. At that moment I didn’t really care; I knew I wouldn’t see them again for a long time and, when I did, would barely recognise them and they would not recognise me at all. Luisa had changed, become quite stout, her features coarse. She was in her twenties still, yet little girlishness remained in her face or her gestures. She looked tired from the journey but wore another kind of tiredness too; the kind that is not merely physical, and that often masks disappointment. I’d seen her only once or twice since our mother’s funeral, though she’d written to my father in between with news of the children.
My brother, Miguel, had returned twice after my mother died, staying fewer days than he’d intended both times. My father had been quiet and angry for days after each visit. Miguel had talked both times about going to work overseas and now finally he’d come with the news that he was leaving for the Middle East at the end of the month. He was thinner, the skin of his face and arms dry and dark. His forearms were marked with fine scars and his palms were rough and red. His hair, still thick, was shot with grey in places, though the effect was still of youth. When I saw him, I thought of the jetty boys; he wouldn’t have been out of place among them.
When he greeted me, my brother smiled and embraced me, swaying gently. On his breath was the faint, sweet smell of liquor consumed the night before. He wasn’t drunk, but he too looked tired. He’d come a long way, arriving that morning having travelled all night. He spoke briefly to Jonah and Bina and some of the others that he recognised, but then slept for an hour beside the children – our sister’s and the baby Marisol – in Bina’s apartment.
Aunt Bina greeted visitors at the door for most of the morning and into the afternoon until Missy arrived and took over the same duties. Elisa said very little to me but watched me from time to time. She sat staunchly next to Lorna. Lorna rocked back and forth where she sat, clutching Marisol so tightly to her that I wondered the baby didn’t suffocate. She wore her grief and her fear openly. By comparison I must have seemed cold, but the truth was I was still numb. My father’s death made no sense. I pictured him at the rally, at the jetty with Jonah. I still expected him to arrive home, as I had my mother seven years before.
So many people came. Some I didn’t recognise at all. The mode of my father’s death had elevated him to the status of a hero and it seemed as if everyone in Greenhills wanted to demonstrate some connection with him. I was pointed out over and over again. ‘That is his son.’
Jonah and the jetty boys came. Without my father, without Subong in his orbit, for he too was absent, they seemed somehow incoherent. I wondered if they felt it too. Dil was among them but I didn’t look at him even when he offered a greeting, pretending to be lost in my own thoughts. ‘Subong?’ I asked Jonah, but without reproach in my voice; Subong had looked up to my father and today would have been hard for him to bear.
‘Never showed up the day after,’ Jonah said. ‘I sent Dil to his mother’s, but he’s not been home.’ I stabbed a look at Dil. He was watching me and lifted his chin, raised his eyebrows, his eyes without challenge, as if inviting a friendly remark.
‘I heard him say he saw who started the fire,’ I said loudly.
‘I heard it too,’ Jonah said.
‘No doubt it was deliberate,’ Uncle Bee said from the door. He’d brought Missy, Suelita and Fidel with him. Suelita clung to her mother’s arm.
‘Maybe he’s been taken as a sacrifice for Eddie Casama’s building project,’ someone said, and there was a murmur of alarm.
‘Don’t talk such rubbish at a man’s funeral,’ Jonah snapped.
‘It happens though,’ a woman said.
‘In komik books,’ someone else said.
‘People like us are disposable. They think of us in the same way as pigs or chickens and you wouldn’t have a problem with sacrificing a pig or a chicken,’ the woman continued.
I didn’t want to listen to this, though at another time, about another person, I might have indulged like everyone else in the same kind of macabre speculation.
Suelita came forward to pay her respects. As she turned from the coffin she embraced me without warning, her eyes unguarded and uncertain. Taken by surprise, I barely embraced her back. Still, she held me for a while, her hand cupping the back of my head. She didn’t stay for the entire vigil, leaving perhaps to man the sari-sari store or cook the evening meal. Anyway, there was simply not the room. She was still there though when Benny arrived with America and Aunt Mary and she returned later to join in the prayers at the chapel.
Benny, when he came, stood just inside the door and looked at the coffin and around the room, taking it all in. He’d never been inside my father’s apartment before, for he hadn’t been one of the visitors when Lorna gave birth to Marisol, nor when my mother died, which wasn’t long after the loss of his own father. Then Aunt Mary had thought him too young to attend another funeral so soon and he was dispatched, against his will, to a school friend’s house and on his return sulked for several days. He seemed plain now somehow, unadorned, and I realised of course that he hadn’t brought his sketchbook or his bag full of charcoal and pencils and I was disappointed. After all, what other record would my father’s death leave? I looked round the room at all the people and thought, bitterly, that it could have been, should have been, any one of them that died under the market-hall roof.
Benny wedged himself against the wall and sat with his feet drawn in towards him. Suelita glanced in his direction and he smiled at her, looking away again without lingering. They caught each other’s eyes a few times after that. I was distantly aware of each look. But they didn’t speak, and when Benny left it was my eyes that he searched out last.
Mulrooney and Pastor Levi came, with Levi’s wife Eveline. I noticed absently that Father Mulrooney’s hair still looked good, though it had grown out a little. When he greeted me I found myself saying, ‘She did a really good job, Father,’ nodding at his hair. He blushed and touched it lightly with one hand. He read aloud from the Bible and Pastor Levi said a prayer over the coffin. The heat blended with the sound of their voices in a dense vibration. I felt as if I was watching everything from a distance, as if it wasn’t my father who lay on the table, nor I watching his coffin. I didn’t care about God or heaven or the spirits now. All I knew was the hollowness in me, the sense of having been cut adrift.
After a while it was decided that my father would be moved to the chapel. More and more people were arriving and the crowds filled the courtyard, pressing out into the alleyway. He was carried by my brother and myself and Jonah and the jetty boys. I wouldn’t let Dil take a place under the coffin and shoved him aside when he tried to help. He moved away without protest. Jonah eyed me silently for a moment and appraised Dil.
Uncle Bee went before us down the stairs, coaxing people to move aside, and slowly, fearful of touching the walls, doorframe, railings with the coffin, lest my father’s soul be anchored to the building forever, we manoeuvred him down to the street. The visitors formed a long line behind us. I couldn’t recollect seeing such a large gathering for a funeral before. We made our way to the chapel, Mulrooney and Levi walking in front. I moved automatically, stepping in time with the other pall-bearers. My arms and shoulders ached. From behind the coffin I heard Lorna cry out but I couldn’t turn my head to look. And so I didn’t notice when, in the midst of all this, the House-On-Wheels returned to Esperanza Street and fell in alongside our procession.
We entered the chapel where the vigil continued. People took turns sitting next to me – America, Jonah, Missy and Uncle Bee, even Benny – but I was only dimly aware of them in the soft night, or at least no more aware of them than I was of the shadows and candle flame, of the silence and the chanting, of the muted sounds of grief. Subong never came and I decided, grimly, that he would not return, that no trace of him would be found. I didn’t notice that Lorna wasn’t in the pew next to me and, truthfully, I didn’t really care where she was. I resented her grief; she’d known my father for so short a time anyway.
Dub came late in the night and stayed for a couple of hours. As he stood up to leave he hesitated and, following his gaze into the shadows, I saw that BabyLu was there too, in a corner by herself. I hadn’t expected her to come and she didn’t look at me but stared straight ahead. She wore a scarf that covered much of her face but it was unmistakeably her. Dub walked out quickly but I knew he would wait for her in the dark outside the chapel. Seeing that my attention wasn’t on my father’s coffin, a few people glanced curiously at BabyLu. She crossed herself and bent her head so that her face was almost entirely hidden. When I looked again a little while later she’d gone.
When I came out into the bright morning sun, I saw at last Lorna and her baby and, with her, Lottie, Lando, Luis, Lenora, Luke and Buan and the ramshackle contraption that was the House-On-Wheels. The gaming tables still hung awry. The children looked hungry. Lando came over and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘We didn’t expect to come back and find Dante gone,’ he said.
‘Didn’t expect to find the street half burned down either,’ Lottie said. I was annoyed with her for exaggerating. It felt like she was making light of things, like they weren’t important enough to be accurate about.
‘I don’t really care about the street.’ I knew as I said it how rude it sounded.
‘Everyone’s been talking about how he died. He was a hero,’ she said carefully.
‘How long are you staying?’ I asked.
Lottie shrugged. ‘Depends on the girl.’ I hadn’t thought about Lorna, about what she might do now that my father was dead. Now that I considered it, I assumed she’d leave the same way she’d come, in the House-on-Wheels.
But Lorna, her eyes on Marisol, who lay wriggling on a pile of bedding in the House, said sullenly, ‘I don’t want to come.’
‘Where else can you go?’ Lottie said. ‘Your rich husband gonna take care of you and your bastard child? Buy you a coupé?’
Lorna didn’t reply but looked at me, her eyes red, the skin of her cheeks blotched.
‘Your father paid up his rent for a few days?’ Lottie said. ‘Or she has to leave straight away?’
I looked away so that she might not see how her question offended me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘You know?’ she said to her daughter.
Lorna stole a look in my direction before replying. ‘He always paid to the end of the month.’
‘So you want us to wait around till you’ve considered all your offers?’ Lottie said.
Irritably, I cast my eyes about the gathering. I hadn’t thought about any of this, about Lorna, about sorting through my father’s things, emptying his apartment so that it might be rented again to a stranger. Even his vigil and the burial to come had been organised by someone else. I spotted my brother with Jonah and watched him till I caught his eye. He waved me over and, gratefully, I excused myself and went to join him.
Miguel was smoking a cigarette. He looked pale. ‘What’s your plan now?’ he said. I didn’t have one. I told him that we had to think about clearing the apartment, making sure our father’s things were in order. ‘Not me, man,’ he said. ‘I can’t stay long.’
‘Your father lived like a saint,’ Jonah said. ‘A lot less stuff than most people.’
‘Sure,’ my brother laughed, ‘a saint. That his baby?’ He nodded towards the House-on-Wheels.
‘No,’ I said.
He finished his cigarette and, straight away, lit another. ‘Come with me to Saudi,’ he said. ‘We could lie about your age.’ I hadn’t considered the possibility of escaping, not just Esperanza and Puerto, but the country.
‘Your father would’ve wanted you to finish your studies,’ said Jonah. ‘Plenty of time for gallivanting later.’
‘Gallivanting!’ my brother laughed again. ‘Joseph never had that in him. Always serious about life, from the very beginning.’
‘No sign of Subong?’ I asked Jonah.
‘His mother went to the police. They filed a report.’
My brother snorted. ‘This country’s going to hell. He’ll be washed ashore in a week.’
‘It’s a hard enough time, Miguel.’ Jonah clapped him on the shoulder gently enough but his words were abrupt and there was iron in his voice.
My brother ground his cigarette out without finishing it. I studied him cautiously. ‘You ever think about getting married?’ I said.
‘Sure, I’m gonna marry an actress,’ he said without looking at me.
‘Seriously, Miguel. Find someone to look after you.’
‘You know any rich women?’
‘Just any decent girl.’
‘I’m not cleaning up Pop’s mess if that’s what you’re hoping.’
I looked over at Lorna. She was crying now, quietly, her face in profile, lower lip jutting out sulkily. She really wasn’t pretty, I thought, yet the baby was cute. ‘I didn’t mean her in particular,’ I said.
‘What plan are you boys hatching?’ said my sister coming towards us. My nephews trailed after her, squabbling at her heels, but she ignored them.
‘Poor girl,’ said Jonah, looking at Lorna. ‘I guess your father taking her in gave her hope for a while.’
‘Who is she anyway?’ Luisa said. ‘He wasn’t her father or her husband.’
‘Is that four now, Luisa?’ Jonah said.
My sister looked down at her children. ‘Yeah,’ she said.
‘Keep you out of trouble,’ Jonah said.
‘Married young. Never had a chance to get in trouble,’ she glanced at Lorna.
‘You didn’t have a lot but you had more than her,’ Jonah said. Luisa’s eyes blazed at him.
Soon it was time to take my father to the cemetery, where arrangements had been made for him to lie beside my mother. Luisa and Miguel were quiet through the mass. Lorna cried openly and once or twice I saw Luisa cast a scornful look at her. The Bukaykays all came to see my father interred, as well as Aunt Mary and the boys and America. I didn’t look about to see who else came and who didn’t, though I was conscious of a crowd. I stared instead at the wall of tombs as my father’s coffin was pushed in and the opening sealed with concrete, the cemetery boys balanced barefoot on planks and bamboo scaffolding. The fate of the cemetery was still uncertain but there was nowhere else for him to go. I pushed the thought away for now and started thinking about the reality of going through his things, of understanding more fully, from the minutiae of his life, what kind of a man he’d been. I wasn’t looking forward to it, and when I overheard Luisa complaining to Missy that it would take her days to sort through Pop’s stuff, I kept quiet.
On the way back we returned home by a different route, snaking in a long line through the alleys of Greenhills, just as we’d done for my mother.